


Izzy

by heytheremisterblue



Category: Half-Life
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mourning, One Shot, Written Before Half-Life: Alyx, lots and lots of tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 15:31:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19231945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heytheremisterblue/pseuds/heytheremisterblue
Summary: Isaac knew something had happened before he even found out.Rated T for death and graphic depiction of blood.





	Izzy

Nervous fingers picked at the inside seams of lab coat pockets, as they tended to do regardless of any occasion appropriate for nervousness. There was no shortage of adrenaline in his blood at any given moment; he supposed he could call it a disorder if he so desired to, though with the environment that has surrounded him for so long, _disorder_ implied that being a bit jumpy was perhaps a negative thing, when, in unfortunate reality, a quick response to danger meant the difference between a bullet landing inches from your face or making a nice jelly out of your cranium. As such, Isaac Kleiner, a very nervous person, attempted as well as possible to consider it a positive trait. 

It was very much with him in this moment after the launch. His fingers picked not only at white lint but at their own skin, the not-disorder keeping him from fully enjoying the sight of billowing smoke dissipating throughout the clear blue sky and slowly fogging the launch control room’s windows with soot. Someone was going to have to clean this up and he was quite grateful it would not be him. He resisted the urge to chew the sore on the inside of his cheek—another tick. Something seemed incredibly wrong despite everything being perfectly correct and in order. They succeeded, they’d closed the Combine portal, so what was bothering him? And where in heaven’s name was Lamarr?

Those around him at ground control raved, hollering, especially Magnusson, but he could not bring himself to. His fingers pinched the seams harder. Something was wrong, if only he could just put his…

A face passed through his mind. Dark skin, speckled with age, white, coily hair, kind eyes. His closest friend. Instead of the sensation of weight lifting out of his grasp, typical at the sight of him, his stomach twisted like a wet cloth being wrung. This wasn’t a feeling to be ignored; something was deeply wrong.

“I-I— Pardon me, but I must go… ch-check on something.” He would have to be with Alyx still, he deduced as he marched quickly out of the room in his beaten old loafers. They probably headed for the hangar, which meant that if he was wrong—which he pleaded that he was—he could still say goodbye to Alyx and Gordon before they headed off to search for Judith, preventing Eli from worrying about him. This must be a false alarm. It simply must. 

The second he creaked open the door to the outside, time seemed to slow to a crawling pace. The first stimulus to hit his senses was the unmistakable sound of Alyx weeping, an activity she had long abandoned past her adolescence. This was enough to let him know that something was very, very, undoubtedly, horribly wrong. The next thing he felt was alternating pressure on the balls of his feet, slamming against the asphalt as he picked up his pace from a walk to a canter and then a full run. As he approached the hangar he heard mechanical whirs and chirps coming from D0g’s processor; he sounded, as much as a machine could, awfully sad. The door burst open from his impact and he sprinted to the railing and looked over.

Eli. In his daughter’s arms. Unconscious, he could only hope. Gordon. Laying on the ground. Unconscious, he could only hope. 

“Alyx!” His desperate cry was tailed by a huge breath in, a gasp, a shiver. The old lift wasn’t going to get back up in enough time. In just a split-second he decided he was going to risk the shattering of his frail body and make the ten-foot jump down to the hangar floor. 

“Dr. Kleiner,” Alyx sobbed. “Help me, please, god. He’s dying. A-an advisor came and h-hhhhe…” Her last word turned into a high whine before it could escape her mouth and she began to cry even harder than before. 

_no no no this cannot be this simply cannot be_

His feet nearly crumpled like paper under his weight and he wretched out a noise of shock as pain shot up his legs, directly through bone. Still, he stumbled, practically crawled over to Alyx and Eli to lay hands on him. 

_I just saw him only minutes ago I saw him leave he was right there this can’t be happening_

No movement in his chest, no beat when he pressed his fingers into his neck in as many places as he could think to before confirming the one thing he didn’t want to believe.

_no. no. Eli no. I can’t do this without you you have to come back you can’t just leave your daughter_

Kleiner choked back tears as if he were angry at them. How dare they get in the way, how dare they cloud the last moment he would ever see his best friend, how dare they—

“Go-ordon.”

His foggy eyes looked up at hers and zipped over to the slumped-over HEV suit on the ground next to them. “Is he… ohh god, please tell me he’s okay…”

Hands and knees moved on the rough concrete, scuffing the knees of his already worn-down jeans. His hands touched auburn hair. “Dr. F-Freeman,” he stuttered. “Dr. Freeman.”

_Beep, beep. Vital signs are dropping._

“He’s alive! Oh, great scott, he’s alive! Thank goodness for that suit!”

The knowledge that he was alive and not in critical condition was extremely valuable information that allowed him to lay the young scientist on his back and examine him further. Cuts and bruises, a nasty gash on his head that would most certainly need immediate medical treatment. Otherwise, though, he was okay. Simply unconscious from the shock of an assumed fall after the Advisor dropped him.

_“Dad…”_

For a few seconds concern over the state of Isaac’s former student completely distracted from the dead. He had turned his back to Alyx, crouched over Gordon’s body, and when he heard her call for her father he whirled around again to see her still clutching him, still rocking him and caressing his hair.

“U-uh… D0g!” he called with the strongest voice he could muster, and the mech ‘canine’ sprung to action at the sound of his name. “Go get help. Do you hear me? Find a medic as quickly as you can and return here at once!”

Nodding his sheet-metal head, he took off for the larger sum of the White Forest base. Kleiner’s attention diverted to his god daughter.

“Alyx.” His tone wavered with great significance. She ignored him and held her father closer, plugging the hole in the back of his neck gently with her hand. Tears returned to his bottom eyelids. “Alyx, my darling. You have to let go.”

An old hand came to rest on her young, tanner one. It immediately slipped away. “No. No, D0g is getting help. He’s gonna be okay.”

“Sweetheart. He’s gone,” he struggled. “Eli is dead.”

_”Don’t say that.”_

“It’s true.”

_”No!”_

Colorless, Eli—or his husk, rather—still lay where dropped before his arrival. All of the blood draining and coating Alyx and the hangar’s concrete left the carcass dry and gray, unnerving for eyes’ consumption. Wrong, so wrong. The signature vest he clung to every day since he found it seemed unholy drenched in this maroon. It was all Dr. Kleiner, Isaac, Izzy could do to keep breathing, keep living as he gazed at the image carving a hole into his heart. Oh god, no one would ever call him Izzy again, with a bright smile and the upturned corners of old, generous eyes. His expression sat neutral now. Not pained, not even uncomfortable, but contented. Easy. He was never easy before; he didn’t have the luxury to be.

“Dear.” His voice softened considerably, like the air was too harsh for anything louder to pass through. Amber eyes looked up at his in response, reddened and swollen from hundreds of tears. “Your father is gone. You should let him go.”

Alyx whined out a few more sobs. “I don’t want to.”

“We need,” he began, cut short when his breath hitched, “we need to take his body. We need to do with it what he wanted.”

“Please don’t call him ‘it…’”

His heart smashed into a thousand little pieces at the sound of her voice, barely even a whisper. The fact that he remained intact, even if he was ready to break down, was a miracle. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Quiet. Much, much too quiet. Neither had anymore words to share, or perhaps didn’t perceive them worth sharing. Alyx continued to cradle him in her arms and stroke his hair, covering it with a little bit more blood from her hand with every movement, something she hardly noticed and didn’t care to. Metal joints creaked back and forth, bounding forward, great big ‘paws’ leading medics to the scene. They took Gordon on a cloth stretcher first only after giving him a look where he lay; he would awaken and be completely fine, they hoped.

After coaxing, the daughter of their fearless leader finally let go, planting one last little kiss on his forehead and murmuring a goodbye. They took him away. They loaded Eli’s body onto a second stretcher, folded a blanket over him, and carried him out of sight.

That was the last time Isaac Kleiner ever saw his best friend.


End file.
